Anna Karenina eBook

What Vronsky attacked first as being the easiest was
his pecuniary position. Writing out on note
paper in his minute hand all that he owed, he added
up the amount and found that his debts amounted to
seventeen thousand and some odd hundreds, which he
left out for the sake of clearness. Reckoning
up his money and his bank book, he found that he had
left one thousand eight hundred roubles, and nothing
coming in before the New Year. Reckoning over
again his list of debts, Vronsky copied it, dividing
it into three classes. In the first class he
put the debts which he would have to pay at once,
or for which he must in any case have the money ready
so that on demand for payment there could not be a
moment’s delay in paying. Such debts amounted
to about four thousand: one thousand five hundred
for a horse, and two thousand five hundred as surety
for a young comrade, Venovsky, who had lost that sum
to a cardsharper in Vronsky’s presence.
Vronsky had wanted to pay the money at the time (he
had that amount then), but Venovsky and Yashvin had
insisted that they would pay and not Vronsky, who
had not played. That was so far well, but Vronsky
knew that in this dirty business, though his only
share in it was undertaking by word of mouth to be
surety for Venovsky, it was absolutely necessary for
him to have the two thousand five hundred roubles
so as to be able to fling it at the swindler, and
have no more words with him. And so for this
first and most important division he must have four
thousand roubles. The second class—­eight
thousand roubles—­consisted of less important
debts. These were principally accounts owing
in connection with his race horses, to the purveyor
of oats and hay, the English saddler, and so on.
He would have to pay some two thousand roubles on
these debts too, in order to be quite free from anxiety.
The last class of debts—­to shops, to hotels,
to his tailor—­were such as need not be considered.
So that he needed at least six thousand roubles for
current expenses, and he only had one thousand eight
hundred. For a man with one hundred thousand
roubles of revenue, which was what everyone fixed
as Vronsky’s income, such debts, one would suppose,
could hardly be embarrassing; but the fact was that
he was far from having one hundred thousand.
His father’s immense property, which alone
yielded a yearly income of two hundred thousand, was
left undivided between the brothers. At the time
when the elder brother, with a mass of debts, married
Princess Varya Tchirkova, the daughter of a Decembrist
without any fortune whatever, Alexey had given up
to his elder brother almost the whole income from
his father’s estate, reserving for himself only
twenty-five thousand a year from it. Alexey had
said at the time to his brother that that sum would
be sufficient for him until he married, which he probably
never would do. And his brother, who was in
command of one of the most expensive regiments, and
was only just married, could not decline the gift.